New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday urged the state Public Service Commission to reject Consolidated Edison’s request for a rate increase in 2014, citing the company’s performance during superstorm Sandy and the recent power outage on Metro-North’s New Haven line.

“It’s clear that now is not the time for Con Edison to demand that its customers pay more,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement.

The governor’s comments come after The Wall Street Journal wrote about ConEd’s proposal — and the Cuomo administration’s counter proposal — in Tuesday’s paper.

In a letter to the bi-partisan PSC, Mr. Cuomo said last year’s hurricane and the Metro-North outage “reinforced the importance of a reliable electric system and the need to hold utilities accountable for their preparedness and response, especially when considering potential rate hikes.” Read More »

Chunks of debris and scaffolding lay in the middle of a sidewalk after falling off of Christ Church at 326 Clinton St in Cobble Hill.

An assistant Attorney General died Thursday night after lightning struck a Brooklyn church, sending scaffolding tumbling down on him. His was the only New York-area death in a fierce storm that blew through the region Thursday.

Assistant Attorney General Richard Schwartz was walking in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn just before 8 p.m. when lightning struck Christ Church, knocking scaffolding off the building near the corner of Clinton and Kane streets.

Nicola Wheir, 38 years old, watched from her apartment window as lightning hit the church. “The next thing I heard, it sounded like thunder, but it was way louder and longer than thunder,” she said. “Then I realized that the sound was rolling down the side of the building.” Read More »

ConEd staffers go back to work to deal with severe weather conditions, like those photographed above earlier this month.

UPDATE AT 6:30 P.M. | Consolidated Edison Inc. and its biggest union struck a deal Thursday to end the utility’s first work stoppage in nearly three decades, putting 8,500 utility employees back to work before severe storms were expected to hit New York.

The tentative agreement came a day after Gov. Andrew Cuomo emerged as a voice urging the two sides to negotiate. By Thursday morning, Cuomo had both sides in his Manhattan office and a few hours later, a new four-year contract had been hashed out, officials said. Read More »

Consolidated Edison Inc., the largest utility company in New York state, has given $250,000 to the powerful Committee to Save New York, one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s key allies whose political spending has come under scrutiny in recent months.

ConEd made the donation last year and is now one of a handful of contributors to publicly disclose their financial involvement with the Committee to Save New York, a largely business-backed nonprofit that has spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying efforts to boost Cuomo’s agenda.